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Wikipedia has a nice, but tiny list of major recent flares, that will give you an idea. It looks like on a decade scale, X2 is pretty minor. Apparently they estimate the largest observed flare to be an X45.

I think the last thing anybody wants is one or more government's interfering with the Internet.

Perhaps the best solution would just be to define "Internet Access" as a utility that provides unrestricted use of an Internet connection. Just like the powercompany can't introduce fancy tech to prevent me from powering a TV if it does something the electric company doesn't like, if I'm paying for a service, Ishould be able to use it as I see fit. I personally think that companies shouldn't be able to advertise a service as "Internet" if they are blocking certain sites,certain ports, or other services I may wish to access.

It is just ridiculous that to be able to connect to something on Port 25, I have to pay twice as much for a "business" account. What is happening here is thatcorporations are trying to "Re-AOL" the Internet so that it conforms to their business models.

tekgoblin writes "Wow, I would never have thought to try and cook food with the power that a standard USB port provides, but someone did. A standard port provides 5V of power, give or take a little. I am not even sure what it takes to heat a small hotplate, but I am sure it is more than 5V. It looks like the guy tied together around 30 USB cables powered by his PC to power this small hotplate. But believe it or not, it seems to have cooked the meat perfectly."

It is almost like they are bringing back "AOL Keywords" in a much more "under-the-radar" way. How long before ebay just says "type e into Google!" once they have the contract nailed down. Perhaps there will also be a subliminal effect- maybe not in with freaky effectiveness, but definitely enough so everybody who searches for something beginning with "e" will have Ebay, Expedia, etc. at the top of their mind when transitioning to the next thing to search for.

ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."

The Linux Terminal Server Project has for years been simplifying the task of time-sharing a Linux system by means of X terminals (including repurposed low-end PCs). Now, stgraber writes "After almost two years or work and 994 commits later made by only 14 contributors, the LTSP team is proud to announce that the Linux Terminal Server Project released LTSP 5.2 on Wednesday the 17th of February. As the LTSP team wanted this release to be some kind of a reference point in LTSP's history, LDM (LTSP Display Manager) 2.1 and LTSPfs 0.6 were released on the same day. Packages for LTSP 5.2, LDM 2.1 and LTSPfs 0.6 are already in Ubuntu Lucid and a backport for Karmic is available. For other distributions, packages should be available very soon. And the upstream code is, as always, available on Launchpad."

I'm sorry, but if you have a kid that for some awful reason, you've given an iPhone, and they are looking up dirty (F$#K!) in a dictionary app, and they are not of the age when they are hearing it on a daily basis from their peers anyway (11) then:

1. You have already failed as a parent. Please have your children report to the nearest hospital in Nebraska. Do not bring them there, they can safely traverse the distance- you cannot. A major meth incident is about to go down, and an infant can probably dodge strangers better than bullets. At least you can be confident that in 20 years, they'll have the knowledge and resources to ensure you don't get eaten by rabid animals. And frankly, you'll probably need the help.

or....

2. You are an uber-geek, your kids are probably uber-geeks. There's nothing you can do about it. Send them on the pilgrimage to Nebraska, and they'll end up starting a colony on Mars. Probably best to just let it go. They can handle a few dirty words- and still school the heck out of their peers. Congratulations- you'll never have to take the blame for a serial killer, and you'll be happy to take the credit when they nab the Nobel Prize.

So come on people, let's let evolution take its course. One dictionary at a time!

I've done a bit of B2B work, and eventually, most of my really successful clients start looking into technology investments, and like all tech-related business, they bring me in. I would say that out of the last 100 products I've reviewed for clients, 98 of which required having my lawyer parse through lengthy NDAs, 95 were "input devices", 90 were "mouse replacement" input devices, and 75 have failed- 20 are waiting to fail, 4 are **LONG** shots, and 1 has actually turned a profit. I'm just glad I recommended against everything but the profitable one, with the exception of one extremely qualified recommendation on one of the long shots- (i.e. you have a 2% chance of getting your money back, but if you make it through that lottery, it'll be 200 times what you put in)

Mice are like a gallon jug of milk. Everybody's got one, but they rarely stray from what they are used to when shopping, unless you can really blow somebody out of the water.